Quotes About Biology

Coghill has shown that the motor patterns of the animal develop prior to the development of sensory innervation.

At each step biochemical triggers and feedbacks determine which of the alternative developmental pathways among several possibles a group of cells will actually follow.

By feeding back information on the lie of the land to the gene-complex, the cytoplasm thus co-determines which genes should be active and which should be temporarily or permanently switched off.

The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism..

Biology designed the dance. Terror timed it. Dictated the rhythm with which their bodies answered each other. As though they already knew that for each tremor of pleasure they would pay with an equal measure of pain. As though they knew that how far they went would be measured against how far they would be taken.

Biology designed the dance. Terror timed it.

As we age, it's as if the calcium seeps out of our skeletons and into our tissues.

Being mortal is about the struggle to cope with the constraints of our biology, with the limits set by genes and cells and flesh and bone. Medical science has given us remarkable power to push against these limits, and the potential value of this power was a central reason I became a doctor. But again and again, I have seen the damage we in medicine do when we fail to acknowledge that such power is finite and always will be. We

Human birth...is a solution to an evolutionary problem: how a mammal can walk upright, which requires a small, fixed, bony pelvis, and also possess a large brain, which entails a baby whose head is too big to fit through that small pelvis...in a sense, all human mothers give birth prematurely. Other mammals are born mature enough to walk and seek food within hours; our newborns are small and helpless for months.

The hardest substance in the human body is the white enamel of the teeth

Hair grows gray, for instance, simply because we run out of the pigment cells that give hair its color.

In the course of a normal lifetime, the muscles of the jaw lose about 40 percent of their mass and the bones of the mandible lose about 20 percent, becoming porous and weak. The ability

I AM LEERY of suggesting the idea that endings are controllable. No one ever really has control. Physics and biology and accident ultimately have their way in our lives. But the point is that we are not helpless either. Courage is the strength to recognize both realities.

the greater blood flow to the face drained blood from the brain.)

so the smaller the patient (and his or her blood supply) the greater the effect. Members

Being mortal is about the struggle to cope with the constraints of our biology, with the limits set by genes and cells and flesh and bone.

In the course of a normal lifetime, the muscles of the jaw lose about 40 percent of their mass and the bones of the mandible lose about 20 percent, becoming porous and weak.

When lipofuscin accumulates in sweat glands, the sweat glands cannot function, which helps explain why we become so susceptible to heat stroke and heat exhaustion in old age.

The important thing to realize is the males in most species will breed with any female who stays still long enough. It's the females who are selective. What they desire has a huge effect. If all the female walruses got together one day to decide they wanted polka dots, within a few generations the males would have polka dots. The female's wish made physical on the male's body.

Think of the actual physical elements that compose our bodies: we are 98 percent hydrogen and oxygen and carbon. That's table sugar. You are made of the same stuff as table sugar. Just a couple of tiny differences here and there and look what happened to the sugar: it can stand upright and send tweets.

Think of the actual physical elements that compose our bodies: we are 98 percent hydrogen and oxygen and carbon. That's table sugar. You are made of the same stuff as table sugar.

Think of the actual physical elements that compose our bodies: we are 98 percent hydrogen and oxygen and carbon. That's table sugar. You are made of the same stuff as table sugar. Just a couple of tiny differences here and there and look what happened to the sugar: it can stand upright and send tweets.

It takes seven years to digest gum.

NASA scientists have discovered a new form of life, unfortunately, it won't date them either.